Projects & Impact

AHP has built its business on applying best practices, many of which we have helped to shape, and real-world, hands-on knowledge to improving systems and business practices for our clients.

In all of the work that we do, we are guided by our mission to improve health and human services systems of care and business operations to help organizations and individuals reach their full potential.

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A state department of mental health has engaged AHP to deliver research and consulting services to improve business operations and impact systems of care through recruiting and retaining a high performance professional services workforce. AHP will provide guidelines for an optimal compensation and workforce development strategy to enable contracted provider agencies to effectively recruit and retain highly qualified behavioral health professionals to provide psychiatric services at inpatient and outpatient facilities statewide. Services include those provided to patients and clients by psychiatrists, other physicians, psychologists, and additional professional staff including “doctors on call” to ensure that a psychiatrist is onsite 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year at every inpatient site.

Impact:
The ultimate goal is to develop a best practices compensation model to guide organizational change to a new trauma-informed, person-centered culture of care that incorporates high-performance business practices.

AHP is the evaluator for a Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS) grant to expand medical and behavioral health service systems capacity to engage and retain pregnant and postpartum women in integrated medication assisted treatment (MAT) and health care, and addiction and recovery support services. Funded through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) targeted capacity expansion portfolio, The Moms Do Care Project is being implemented in two communities (one rural and one urban) and focuses on the specific needs of pregnant women with opioid use disorders. Its overarching objective is to provide recovering mothers with increased access to MAT and with individualized services that support sustained recovery, choices about continuing medication, and efforts to maintain custody or contact with their children.

Expected outcomes include increased access and engagement in MAT concurrent with pre-and post-natal care; reduced illicit drug use; and improved health, recovery, and functioning status at the individual level. Systems level outcomes include an increased number of waivered buprenorphine prescribers; increased workforce understanding of opioid dependency in women specific to the needs of pregnant women; reduced negative attitudes of this population among medical providers; and improved integration of primary care and behavioral health services. AHP will assess outcomes through client interviews at three points in time, administrative treatment data, surveys of medical providers, and onsite visits with a range of key informants.

Impact:
The evaluation should provide critical information on implementing this type of complex intervention, as well as its impact at the client and system levels. As a new approach to engaging and serving a population of pregnant opioid-using women, the evaluation findings will help shape program development over time and help determine which components are most promising for which types of women.